The European Space Agency's Herschel and Planck space telescopes are set to blast off on 14 May atop an Ariane 5 ECA launcher from French Guiana, the agency reports.
The 'scopes are destined for "L2", the second Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system lying around 1.5m km from Earth. ESA explains that this is one of five …

Awesome

L2

I presume these scopes are destined to *orbit* L2 rather than occupy it. Might end up a bit of a squeeze once Herschel, Planck, Eddington, Gaia, the James Webb Space Telescope and Darwin all take up residence.

Incidentally, I think it's rather neat that L2 is 1.01 AU from the Sun. There's something pleasing about the ratio between the gravitational strength of the Earth-Moon system and the Sun. A bit like the coincidence of the Sun and Moon's apparent size, which makes for such striking solar eclipses.